Flowserve Corporation (NYSE:FLS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Flowserve Corporation (NYSE:FLS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript October 26, 2023

Operator: Good day. And welcome to the Third Quarter 2023 Flowserve Corporation Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Jay Roueche, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Jay Roueche: Thank you, Melinda. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining our conference call to discuss Flowserve’s third quarter 2023 financial results. On the call with me today are Scott Rowe, Flowserve’s President and Chief Executive Officer; and Amy Schwetz, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared comments, we will open the call for your questions. As a reminder, this event is being webcast and an audio replay will be available. Please note that our earnings materials do and this call will include non-GAAP measures and contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based upon forecasts, expectations and other information available to management as of October 26, 2023, and they involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the company’s control.

We encourage you to review our safe harbor disclosures as well as the reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures to our reported results, both of which are included in our press release and earnings presentation and are accessible on our website in the Investor Relations section. I would now like to turn the call over to Scott Rowe, Flowserve’s President and Chief Executive Officer, for his prepared comments.

Scott Rowe: Thanks, Jay, and good morning, everyone. It was great to see so many of you in person at our Analyst Day a few weeks ago in New York City, where we outlined our 2027 financial targets and our strategies to achieve them. We discussed our new operating model and how it has enabled the company to improve our speed, accountability and cost efficiency in our operations. We also highlighted our belief that the intersection of energy security and energy transition has Flowserve well positioned for accelerated growth driven by the success of our 3D strategy, which we’ll provide further updates and progress on today. For anyone who hasn’t reviewed the Analyst Day materials, I’d encourage you to access them on our Web site in the Investor Relations section.

Let’s now turn to the quarter. I’m extremely pleased with the continued strong operating performance that we demonstrated again this quarter. This performance drove admirable financial results, including the adjusted earnings per share of $0.50, which exceeded our internal expectations. Our execution continued to improve during the quarter, evidenced by our highest quarterly revenue since 2015 with an adjusted gross margin of nearly 30% despite the higher mix of original equipment revenue. Our markets remain healthy and supportive and we delivered over $1 billion in bookings for the seventh consecutive quarter. With a book-to-bill of nearly 1 times, we largely maintained our near-record backlog of $2.8 billion. This backlog provides a strong foundation to our 2024 revenue and earnings growth expectations.

Our third quarter results, coupled with our improved execution provided us the confidence to raise our full year 2023 revenue and adjusted EPS targets for the third consecutive quarter this year. While our operating performance was certainly strong in the third quarter, both our reported and adjusted earnings per share were tempered by a discrete $10.7 million noncash accrual related to the annual assessment of certain long term liabilities. This expense had a $0.06 impact in the quarter for both reported and adjusted earnings per share. Nevertheless, we continue to build on the momentum established late last year. We delivered our fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue and earnings growth. We also took significant actions during the quarter that largely completed our new operating model intended to drive greater speed and accountability within the organization.

We have now exceeded the $50 million annualized cost reduction goal we set out late last year, which will largely be reflected in the 2024 results. More importantly, we are already realizing benefits from the new operating model with a more efficient and effective operating platform. The seven business units within our two segments are driving an improved focus on their targeted markets that enable better product positioning, while the improved functional support provides the framework and processes to ensure greater operational effectiveness. I am confident that the new operating model will help drive our expectations for accelerated growth and strong financial performance. During the third quarter, we generated bookings of nearly $1.1 billion.

Compared to last year’s third quarter, which included the $210 million referral award, our bookings this year were driven primarily by smaller project awards in the $5 million to $10 million range with strong aftermarket and MRO work across all regions. Of our awards this quarter, only one project exceeded the $20 million level at roughly $40 million in size. As always, predicting project award timing is difficult. And in the third quarter, we saw several promising opportunities move out of the quarter and are now likely to book in the fourth quarter. Our project funnel has grown year-over-year and we have line of sight to a number of meaningful larger projects that we expect to be awarded over the next several quarters. For instance, we see significant larger project opportunities on the horizon in the Middle East for our traditional oil and gas and petrochemical markets.

The improved project outlook, combined with our strong backlog, enable us to remain disciplined in the work that we pursue. Our project pursuit process requires the margin expectations that we deserve given the risk and effort on these large projects. This approach has proven successful for us to date as we continue to increase the gross margin levels of project work in our backlog and we intend to remain on this trajectory in coming quarters as we aim for continued gross margin progression. In line with our 3D strategy, we continue to capitalize on growing investments in new energy initiatives such as hydrogen and carbon capture, while traditional markets remain healthy. In the third quarter, 3D bookings represented roughly 26% of our total awards, including substantial new energy awards where we are on track to exceed $200 million for the year, a near 50% increase over 2022.

The nuclear and LNG markets are also key to our 3D strategy, given the strong levels of expected growth. While we didn’t see any large projects in these categories in the third quarter, we booked a healthy amount of smaller awards as well as significant ongoing MRO and aftermarket work. Turning to our aftermarket business. Most of our customers’ facilities remain highly utilized and are focused on safety, uptime, efficiency and emissions reductions. Flowserve remains well suited to fill these needs. In the third quarter, we generated over $580 million of aftermarket bookings, marking the eighth consecutive quarter exceeding the $500 million-plus threshold. We see this trend continuing with no signs of this activity receding anytime soon. Our market outlook remains positive.

We continue to believe we are in the early years of a multiple year upcycle. We haven’t seen any indication of a slowdown in our served markets. We continue to expect a full year book-to-bill above 1, which will maintain our backlog and support 2024 growth. Our project funnel remains above last year’s third quarter level and has increased 7% since the beginning of the year. We also expect that both aftermarket and MRO activity levels will remain strong into 2024 and beyond. Flowserve is well situated to capitalize on energy security and energy transition. These global themes are expected to continue driving significant investments for decades to come, and our 3D strategy has Flowserve well positioned to drive accelerated growth. Additionally, our exposure to later cycle project investment by industries that have substantially underspent over a three-year period further supports our expectation for multiyear growth.

Let me now turn the call over to Amy to address our third quarter financial results in greater detail.

Amy Schwetz: Thanks, Scott, and good morning, everyone. Reviewing our financial results in greater detail. I’ll start by reiterating how pleased we are with our operational performance and backlog conversion, both of which helped drive results above our expectations for the third quarter. We generated our highest quarterly sales level in nearly eight years at $1.1 billion. And from that, we produced adjusted earnings per share of $0.50. The annual actuarial assessment of certain long-term liabilities slightly muted our results that would have otherwise been even stronger. This accrual resulted in a $10.7 million noncash expense to SG&A reducing both our reported and adjusted earnings per share by roughly $0.06. Based on our strong year-to-date performance and continued execution, we raised our revenue and adjusted EPS guidance ranges for the third consecutive quarter.

This confidence comes from the improved and consistent operating performance of both segments, ongoing supportive end markets and the early benefits of our new organizational design. Third quarter reported earnings per share were $0.35, which includes $0.15 of net adjusted expenses, primarily realignment charges and below the line FX impact, but this was partially offset by the release of tax valuation allowance benefits. Revenue in the third quarter increased over 25% from the prior year, representing growth in nearly all aspects of the business. Original equipment and aftermarket revenues increased 28% and 23%, respectively, compared to the prior year. At the segment level, FPD’s original equipment sales were particularly buoyant, delivering 45% year-over-year growth, while FCD contributed a solid 14% increase.

While we maintain a near record aftermarket backlog at over $1 billion, third quarter aftermarket revenues increased markedly compared to prior year as well at 28% and 22% in FCD and FPD. All of our regions contributed double digit sales growth as well with notable year-over-year improvement in the Middle East and Africa, Latin America and North America of 51, 43% and 24%, respectively. Europe and Asia also delivered with substantial increases of 18% and 14%, respectively. Shifting to margins. we generated significant year-over-year improvement, reflecting the traction we’ve generated from our focus on operational excellence as well as the leverage benefit from our rising revenues in the quarter. Our adjusted gross margin increased 230 basis points year-over-year to 29.7%.

Additional factors for the improvement include our price increases initiated over the last year and improved supply chain environment and reduce frictional costs. Partially offsetting these factors, however, were headwinds from the modest mix shift resulting from increased original equipment work, including some shipments of lower margin original equipment work from backlog that was booked in challenging market conditions as well as increased performance based compensation accruals. While we are pleased with our operating progress in year-to-date adjusted gross margin of 30.1%, this is a foundational level we intend to further improve upon. As you heard at our Analyst Day last month, we have defined a clear path to drive margin expansion through the combination of the new organizational design and are focused on operational excellence and product management that we believe are key levers for our longer term margin targets.

We have consistently increased the margin in our backlog over the past year as visibility to end markets at our bookings levels have steadily improved. Additionally, the early benefits of our new organizational model enabled us to modestly exceed our $50 million annualized cost reduction goal where roughly 60% of the savings identified in action will benefit the cost of goods sold line. On a reported basis, third quarter gross margins increased 160 basis points to 29%, where in addition to the previously discussed items, the quarter was impacted by increased realignment charges of $7.6 million versus the prior year. Third quarter adjusted SG&A increased $11 million to $235 million compared to last year. The increase was primarily due to higher performance-based incentive accruals of $11 million as well as a $3 million increase in the annual true-up of the previously mentioned actuarially determined liabilities, which were partially offset by $6 million — by a $6 million benefit from bad debt reversal.

As a percent of sales, adjusted SG&A decreased 420 basis points to 21.4% as we successfully leveraged higher revenues and realized some early benefits from our 2023 cost-out plan. As we grow our revenues and maintain our cost focus, including benefits from the organizational redesign, we would expect to deliver results even better than these levels in the future. On a reported basis, third quarter SG&A increased year-over-year by $31 million to $252 million. In addition to the items just mentioned, our reported amount also includes a $21 million increase in adjusted items, primarily due to a $15 million increase in realignment expenses as we executed the cost reduction program and remaining expenses related to pursuing the Velan transaction.

Despite the dollar increase year-over-year, reported SG&A as a percent of sales declined 230 basis points to 23%. Our third quarter adjusted operating margin increased 630 basis points to 8.7%, reflecting our strong operational performance, lower frictional costs and ongoing SG&A controls, partially offset by the actuarial expense at corporate, which impacted our margin level this quarter by approximately 100 basis points. By segment, FCD and FPD delivered momentum building results with adjusted segment operating margins of 14.7% and 12.3%, respectively. These margins represent year-over-year increases of 420 and 630 basis points, respectively. Third quarter reported operating margin increased 360 basis points year-over-year to 6.4%, where significant operating leverage and operational execution was partially offset by the $28 million increase in adjusted items versus prior year.

Our adjusted tax rate was 11.2% in the third quarter and lower than our full year guidance range. This outcome was achieved primarily due to the geographical mix of income and the timing related to certain foreign tax credits. Our reported rate was even lower. In fact, it was negative due to a $13 million valuation allowance benefit, which we excluded from our adjusted results. Year-to-date, our adjusted tax rate of 18.3% is still well within our original guidance range of 18% to 20%, and we also expect to finish the full year 2023 within that range at approximately 20%. Turning to cash flow. We are pleased with our year-to-date operating cash flow of $131 million, which represents a $241 million improvement over prior year. In addition to delivering higher earnings, we reduced cash used for working capital by over $150 million despite growing revenue and our significant backlog.

Third quarter operating cash flow of $81 million was also driven primarily by improved earnings and working capital performance. We have now delivered positive operating cash flow in each quarter this year demonstrating our focus beginning late last year to smooth out some seasonality and improve our cadence throughout the year. Even with the significant increase in revenues we’ve delivered in 2023, I am pleased that accounts receivable is a year-to-date modest source of cash, reflecting an $80 million improvement compared to prior year. Our collection efforts have been strong, evidenced by the eight day reduction in our days sales outstanding versus the prior year. Inventory, including contract assets and liabilities has also contributed to our working capital progress as we reduced the cash used by $21 million, bringing the year-to-date improvement up to $38 million.

As a percent of sales, primary working capital supporting our near record backlog improved 170 basis points versus prior year to 30.5% and declined sequentially 140 basis points as well. We will remain focused on reducing our working capital investment to a level well below 30% of sales to our 25% to 27% target outlined at the Analyst Day, which we expect to achieve through supply chain improvements and our more consistent and predictable execution. Significant uses of cash in the third quarter included $26 million in dividends, $16 million in capital expenditures and a $10 million term loan debt reduction payment. While we achieved a nearly $240 million improvement in free cash flow in 2023 compared to prior year, we still expect to see more come in the traditional seasonally robust fourth quarter.

Turning to our outlook for the fourth quarter. We expect to build on our operating momentum and deliver solid quarterly revenue and adjusted earnings once again. which results in our full year revenue guidance range of 18% to 19% with full year adjusted earnings per share of $1.95 to $2.05. At the midpoint, our full year adjusted earnings guidance represents an 80% increase over last year. We expect our markets to remain active, resulting in a full year book-to-bill greater than 1, increasing our year-over-year backlog to support 2024 growth. Our adjusted targets exclude identified realignment expenses of approximately $55 million as well as potential items that may occur during the year, such as below the line currency effects and the impact of other discrete items.

Including the identified realignment spending and our other adjustments year-to-date, we expect our reported EPS in the range of $1.40 to $1.50. As I highlighted at our Analyst Day, we have a preliminary 2024 outlook that supports mid single digit revenue growth, adjusted operating margin improvement of approximately 100 basis points and adjusted EPS growth of 20% to 25%. This outcome would be meaningful progress and provide confidence on the path to achieving our longer term goals. Our early view was based on entering 2024 with a higher quality backlog and building on our 2023 performance with the new organizational model fully in place and designed to increase our speed, accountability and reduced costs. As usual, we plan to initiate our official guidance in early 2024.

Until then, we believe that we have built a rock solid foundation this year and are focused on the right initiatives to drive growth and margin expansion through operational excellence and improved product portfolio management. Together, we will use these levers to keep Flowserve on the path to achieve our 2027 goals at $5 billion plus in organic revenue with adjusted operating margins in the 14% to 16% range to drive adjusted earnings over $4 per share. Let me now return the call over to Scott.

Scott Rowe: Thanks, Amy. Let me now add a few comments on the termination of our previously announced acquisition of Velan. We announced our intent to acquire Velan in February of this year. We obtained all the required regulatory approvals in a timely manner, except the approval from the French government. While we engaged in a constructive process to address all of their concerns, the French Ministry of Economy as part of its foreign direct investment review process ultimately rejected the planned acquisition. We are extremely disappointed in the outcome from the French government, while we believe the acquisition would have provided numerous benefits for both companies and our stakeholders. However, the termination does not change our confidence in nor the trajectory of our 3D growth strategy.

This includes a programmatic M&A approach, which targets 3D strategy, leverages our existing scale, provides confidence in our ability to integrate and generate returns well above our cost of capital. As we have demonstrated over the past two years, our 3D strategy continues to drive accelerated bookings growth, proving that it is the right approach at the right time. We will continue to invest both organically and inorganically in products to support this strategy. Looking at each of the pillars of the 3Ds, I will start with diversification. We believe the markets and products we are focused on will deliver growth in excess of Flowserve’s overall growth rate. Our vacuum pump products, which are a significant component of the diversification pillar have been delivering enhanced bookings growth of a variety of applications and industries in the last few years.

In the third quarter, we were selected to supply dry vacuum pumps for a new advanced semiconductor manufacturing facility in the US. Upon completion, the site will manufacture products for a number of applications, including 5G networking and processing power to support the enhanced demand from artificial intelligence. From a decarbonization perspective, our bookings remained strong, driven in part by nuclear and LNG activity. We continue to be excited about the outlook for the nuclear industry where Flowserve has a broad portfolio of products. Developed countries with older nuclear facilities are currently focused on extending the life of these assets. While emerging regions like India and Eastern Europe have substantial plans for new nuclear facilities to provide clean and reliable energy.

Another key driver in the decarbonization pillar is energy transition where Flowserve was recently selected supply pumps and valves for a new blue ammonia plant in the US. The facility will include autothermal reforming with carbon capture. The complex is expected to supply clean hydrogen and nitrogen to a blue ammonia plant while capturing 1.7 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually. Lastly, on digitization. We believe our ability to digitize our offering positions Flowserve to move up the value chain from products and services to become more of a solutions provider to our customers. Our offering is growing at twice the rate it did last year, and we now have over 75 customer facilities utilizing RedRaven technology with over 2,000 instrumented assets supporting our customers with monitoring, predictive capabilities and full loop optimization.

Flowserve recently partnered with a Scottish beverage producer instrumenting over 100 assets to increase reliability, efficiency and uptime. We are gaining traction across a variety of targeted industries and we are encouraged to see existing customers renew and expand these contracts. Overall, our focus remains on profitably converting our near record $2.8 billion backlog while generating outsized growth for the 3D strategy. We intend to achieve the 2027 financial goals we shared at our Analyst Day, including to grow revenues at a 5% CAGR over the period, expand adjusting operating margins to 14% to 16% and generate adjusted earnings per share of $4. We are confident that with ongoing strength in our end markets, combined with our 3D strategy that we can drive revenue growth and that the new operating model, combined with the successful implementation of our operational excellence program and improved product management processes will help deliver on our margin expansion targets.

Together, these initiatives will enable Flowserve to deliver long term value for our customers, associates and shareholders. In closing, I want to thank our associates for their hard work and dedication in the quarter and for embracing our new operating model to drive improved execution, speed and accountability. The 3D strategy is working and we are well positioned to capitalize on the strong market environment. I am confident in our ability to maintain our operating momentum and deliver further improvement as we close out the year and turn the corner into 2024. Operator, this concludes our prepared remarks, and we’d now like to open the call to questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] And we go to our first question from Andy Kaplowitz with Citigroup.

Andy Kaplowitz: Scott, can you give us more color into the bookings environment moving forward? I know you mentioned you have a number of larger projects on the horizon, but what’s the confidence level that you’d be able to book these over the next quarter or two? And what are your customers saying given all the cross currents out there, either economically or geopolitically, do you see book-to-bill staying above 1 in 2024?

Scott Rowe: And I’d just say I’ll start by saying not a whole lot has changed in terms of our market outlook that we shared last month at the Analyst Day. And so we remain committed to the 5% growth through 2027. And I’d just say the core market activity, we showed that 3.3% number. But if you remember, that was more like a GDP number, and we’re actually pretty excited about that in the core existing markets. And then you combine the 3D strategy, which picks up the diversification and the decarbonization generating at least 5% growth going forward. And so again, nothing significantly has changed. We’re still committed to that. And then if you break it down between our aftermarket and MRO and our project, the aftermarket and MRO has maintained a super high level of activity this year.

We see existing sites and facilities running at very high utilization levels. And I don’t see that changing, right? So we’re not seeing massive new expansion of refining capability in the US and Europe nor in the chemical side. And so with that, we’re seeing these assets being run even harder, generating higher aftermarket and MRO. And so again, I don’t see that trend changing. We’ve been over $500 million now for eight quarters in a row. And I expect that to continue and continue to grow as we work on some of the initiatives that we shared in the Investor Day last month. And then on the project side, what we’re seeing there is incredibly healthy. And so the project funnel is up 5% year-on-year, 7% since the beginning of the year. And so we’ve got great visibility within our CRM system to track these projects.

When we look at our customers on the EPC side, many of those customers, their backlog is up over 30%. And that’s all happened within the last 12 months and a lot of those big orders have not been let down to the OEMs like Flowserve. And then finally, in the Middle East, we see tremendous opportunity with the existing kind of industries on both the refining side and the chemical side with a pretty significant list of projects that are about to book within the next 12 months. And I’d just say one example, we obviously booked the Jafurah award. Last year, at this time, it was over $200 million on pumps alone since then we picked up valve orders, but Jafurah 2 is coming. So the EPCs are just now getting awarded this job. And given the incumbency of bus in the first Jafurah and our strong execution to support Aramco, we’re confident that we pick up a pretty large share of that project as it turns into Jafurah 2.

And then I’d just say, just adding one more kind of lens on this. Obviously, there’s discussion of recession, high interest rates. We track our bookings geographically. We track them by end markets as well. And right now, like we’re really not seeing any slowdown on that traditional run rate business. I’d say of anywhere, there’s a little bit of concern with the chemicals business in Europe. And we’ve seen very, very modest destocking with some of our distributors in the Americas. Outside of that though, our general industries is up about 11% this quarter year-on-year and we still feel good about the outlook. And so I’d say right now, we’re positioned for success through 2024 and beyond, and we’re committed to what we said last month at the Investor Day of growing this business at 5% going forward.

Andy Kaplowitz: And then maybe you or Amy, like just could you comment on the incremental margin you recorded in Q3? I think mid-30s and the sustainability of that margin going forward. I know you have an easy comp against more difficult supply chain last year. But as you said, you’ve been implementing the $50 million cost program that will be reflected more in ’24 results, and you’re perfecting your new organizational design. So with all that understanding, and I think Amy talked about 100 basis points of margin improvement that dialed in so far for ’24. Could that expectation actually be a bit conservative or at least the confidence level given that Q3 is higher here?

Amy Schwetz: So I’ll start with, Andy, by saying we’re not going to stop there as we hit those targets that we’ve outlined. We are pretty pleased with where we finished the third quarter and certainly significant improvement year-over-year. As we look across our seven business units, we really saw improvement in each of them year-on-year and we expect to see that trend continue as we make our way into the fourth quarter. One thing that will be a little bit different in this fourth quarter is we’re not anticipating a heroic increase in revenue from third quarter to fourth quarter. We really see a nice trajectory of revenue growth but more stable across our run rate business as we look at transitioning from Q3 to Q4 where we are anticipating seeing a pretty significant increase in revenue and accounting for the majority of that increase from Q3 to Q4 is in our original equipment pump area of the business where we’ve significantly expanded margins over where we were at last year at this time, but it will create a bit of a change in our mix in the fourth quarter.

So we’re anticipating to see that a bit in gross margins. On an operating margin perspective, we’re going to see those margins at around 10% to exit the year with gross margins around 30%, which will give us a really nice base to grow in 2024.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] And next, we go to the line of Mike Halloran with Baird.

Mike Halloran: So a couple of questions. First on the cash usage from here and how you’re thinking about it. Obviously, you’re in a really good position on the cash side. So is there a pipeline of activity that you think you can move on towards now that the Velan deal didn’t close or are buybacks at all in the picture as you think about the forward — the usage of cash on a forward basis?

Amy Schwetz: So I’ll start by saying it’s a nice position to be in to have a cash and liquidity position that we can talk about meaningful allocation of capital. And we outlined some of our strategies in more detail at the Analyst Day. So I’ll start by saying that we start that with thoughts around our commitments. And one of the things that we outlined at the Analyst Day is an expectation that we would return to the practice of buybacks to offset dilution from equity comps. So I think that’s something that you can start to expect to see in terms of our cash usage going forward. From there, we’re really weighing our choices between reinvestments in the business, inorganic growth, as well as larger scale buybacks or dividend increases.

I will tell you right now, we see abundant opportunities out there in terms of both reinvestment and a pipeline of kind of bolt-on complementary M&A that would help bolster our product portfolio and lead us into markets that we like from a 3D perspective. So we continue to work through that potential M&A portfolio to manage our products. But at the same time, I think we — I like to use the word agnostic when I describe this, we have to always weigh those choices with the opportunity to create long term value through shareholder returns as well.

Scott Rowe: And then just to add on the programmatic M&A funnel. Obviously, we are in pursuit of the Velan transaction. And so some of those got put on hold. We’ve now kind of revamped that. There are — it is a highly fragmented coal control space. And so we’re excited about the potential to do something. We don’t have anything in the immediate term, but I would certainly expect us to continue to progress this in 2024. And ideally, we’re acquiring one to two programmatic M&A style businesses every year that support the 3D strategy.